


Brown Eyes Are Calling Me

by rambunctiousragamuffin



Series: cadavre exquis [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, first drift, pacrim au!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 14:31:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7365283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rambunctiousragamuffin/pseuds/rambunctiousragamuffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the drift, you’re no longer just you. You’re not your drift partner, either. It’s nothing nearly so simple as that. Rather, you become an amalgamation of selves, of memories and personalities. There are no demarcations or delineations, where you begin and end. In the drift, you just are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brown Eyes Are Calling Me

**Author's Note:**

> this was the last of my giveaway fics that i promised, and goes to zippy who requested a pacrim au after the boyjager news!

In the drift, you’re no longer just  _ you _ . You’re not your drift partner, either. It’s nothing nearly so simple as that. Rather, you become an  _ amalgamation _ of selves, of memories and personalities. There are no demarcations or delineations, where you begin and end. In the drift, you just  _ are _ . 

 

It was a particularly unique experience for Finn. For so much of his life, he hadn’t been a person. For most of his life, he had fought for his right to self-determination, to become a person after being reduced to a statistic.

 

When the first event in San Francisco took his family, took his home, took his  _ life _ , he had been ushered into the Reclamation project and relegated to the designation FN-2187. Until his 18th birthday, at least. Once he was of the age of majority, the Reclamation program gave him a pat on the back and shuffled him into the wall initiative.

 

To be honest, he wasn’t sure what was worse: imprisonment in a system by virtue of misfortune or imprisonment by choice. Because that was what he was a prisoner, a slave. The only difference was that this time, he realised it. From the Reclamation project, to the Wall Construction program, he was shuffled from one form of enslavement to another. He had fought so hard for his name,  _ Finn _ , and to  _ make _ a name for himself in the Jaeger program

 

Now, in the Drift, it was taken away.

 

Contrary to FN-2187, Poe had had every choice, and yet he still ended up in the exact same position--that weird liminal space of self and not-self. His parents were both involved in the military, his father was a soldier and his mother was a pilot, but in the Drift, his military lineage didn’t matter anymore. 

 

His military  _ past _ didn’t matter anymore, with his renown as a pilot in the Air Force before he was a Jaeger pilot.

 

Finn felt a jolt of thrill go through him--or was it Poe who had felt that? A little shock of excitement at the memory of being asked to pilot one of the monstrous machines. Probably Poe, then. Finn had felt a different type of excitement, almost a nauseatingly anxious anticipation. He had been given an opportunity to prove himself, to prove himself worthy of a name, and he was terrified that he would fail, that he would disappoint everyone who had had faith in him.

 

Poe grinned over at Finn, in what was supposed to be a comforting gesture.

 

Finn felt it in his own cheeks.

 

There was a temporary loop of elation--Poe elated that Finn was, Finn elated that Poe was--that went around and around and spiralled higher and higher until they were both giddy and jittery and almost missed General Organa’s directive.

 

“Sorry, General, what was that?”

 

“I said ‘bring it down, gentlemen.’ The neural handshake is weakening.”

 

“Right, sorry,” Finn said at the exact same moment that Poe said “You got it, boss!”

 

Poe laughed at Finn’s embarrassed blush--not unkindly, but only because  _ he _ was embarrassed, too, and that’s what Poe did. He laughed things off.

 

He laughed off his mistakes when he made them, because he’s only human, and unlike Finn thought he had to  _ work _ to become the best Jaeger pilot in the Resistance. He had laughed off cruel words said by even crueller children, children who just didn’t understand.

 

Finn wishes that he could’ve laughed off the cruelty of the children that he had grown up with in the Reclamation project, but they had never been  _ cruel _ , not really. Just indifferent. Even then, he had felt like an outsider. They hadn’t even deigned to give him a nickname.

 

Poe had dubbed him “buddy.”

 

_ Poe _ , who was reliving his memories even as Finn did. Memories of meals spent alone, playing in the gardens by himself, bouncing a bounceless tennis ball of of a brick wall.

 

“Hey, it’s okay, buddy,” Poe said. Or maybe thought?

 

In the Drift, you didn’t need to speak. That was something that Poe thought was weird--that the other person would know what you were about to say before you even said it, like some sort of preternatural premonition that his Tia might have had superstitions about.

 

“We’ll just make some memories of our own. Better ones.” Poe felt a rush of gratitude and affection that he knew must have been from Finn. Poe imagined clapping him on the shoulder and Finn imagined spreading his arms and embracing Poe.

 

Finn imagined how  _ warm _ and  _ comfortable _ Poe would be, pressed against him, and wondered how he would smell.

 

Prompted, Poe remembered one time he was sniffing a shirt he had found on the floor to see if it was clean enough to wear. It wasn’t clean enough. It  _ smelled _ . It was rank with sweat and engine grease and probably some sort of Kaiju goo from the R&D department of the base.

 

Poe felt his eyes roll, but really it was just Finn rolling his.

 

Finn imagined kissing Poe under the rain, the smell of petrichor and the slightly salty tang of clean skin fresh in his nose.

 

“Prepare to end neural handshake in three--two--”

 

Perhaps weirder than the Drift itself, was coming back to yourself from it. From going from something  _ so _ much more than you were, back to you. 

 

Finn was so focused on getting himself out of the rig that he nearly missed it when Poe broke the silence.

 

“Hey, buddy. It’s raining today.”

 

“Yeah, I know, it looked pretty miserable out there. Sure am glad that I don’t have patrol duty today.”

 

“No, it’s  _ raining _ today.”


End file.
